China is a similar size but trains are very competitive there.
I think the part that's missing is good urban transit systems. A long distance train loses most of its advantages if you have to hire a car at the end of it.
China has about three times the US population and it’s almost entirely concentrated along their coast. Passenger rail makes sense for that kind of population density. Where the US has similar density, it has Acela, which is the profitable part of Amtrak.
China also has a massive construction bubble that the government keeps propping up in order to delay the inevitable correction. As a result they overbuild a lot of infrastructure, including passenger rail, well beyond the point of diminishing returns.
> China has about three times the US population and it’s almost entirely concentrated along their coast. Passenger rail makes sense for that kind of population density.
But they have high speed rail across the sparsely populated interior as well - not as dense as the network on the coast, but it's there and it successfully competes with flying. So the sort of network that the west half of China has should be possible in the US.
> they overbuild a lot of infrastructure, including passenger rail, well beyond the point of diminishing returns.
Maybe. Or maybe they sensibly plan ahead and build infrastructure that will be needed in the near future. Time will tell.
How is it a non-sequitur? It doesn’t make sense to build infrastructure to support population growth in an area where you are deliberately reducing the population.
Compete in terms of what? Spending at least 5 extra hours before and after you travel in order to just get stuffed inside a tube and get treated like sht?
That's an exaggeration. Airlines will tell you to arrive at the airport 2 hours before your flight but if you're a bit organized, check in online, know what you can and can't pack in your carry-on, I'd say 90 minutes is fine. I usually end up sitting at the gate for about an hour waiting for boarding if I arrive 2 hours in advance.
Even so, a flight from Chicago to San Francisco is a little over 4 hours in the air. A train takes 2 days. There is no comparison.
High Speed Rail doesn't need to cover the country end to end, because most of the travel isn't end to end. There are plenty of "regional" services that can be done that will already remove millions of other worse trips (by car or plane) and will be a net benefit for everyone and everything (saving people time, generating revenue, reducing pollution and noise, etc. etc).
I think the part that's missing is good urban transit systems. A long distance train loses most of its advantages if you have to hire a car at the end of it.